Title: SteamWorld Dig
Genre: Platformer, Adventure
Developer: Image & Form
Platform(s): Windows, Linux, OSX, Nintendo 3DS, PS Vita (reviewed), PS4
I have heard and read a lot about SteamWorld Dig, but it only truly managed to get my attention was when it launched on the PlayStation Vita, just a couple of days back.
From the name, SteamWorld Dig sounds like just another platformer sucking out your labour in the form of countless hours, but there is SO MUCH more to it than what it’s name is perceived like. Once you begin your adventure into the deep mines, it is rather difficult to pull yourself away as you’re constantly fiend-ing to dig deeper and deeper. The lore of “what lies below” is very much out there.
You are Rusty, and old mining steambot who has been handed over a decaying mine in the decaying town of Tumbleton by your ‘late’ Uncle Joe, who supposedly was lost down and seized to make it back to ground level. It is your job to finish what your uncle started and dedicated his life to. What lies deep below the earth’s surface is what allures you: precious metals, minerals, secrets, and clues to what eventually happened to your Uncle Joe.
You start of with a basic rusty old pickaxe that can barely smash through rock. However, as you dig deep into the randomly generated caverns, you begin to find treasures and minerals, which you’re supposed to carry back up to the town and sell for money and levelling up. As you progressively give up the minerals you’ve collected, new equipment is unlocked that makes your mining experience a little less cumbersome.
Yet, it is not the loot-mongering that drives you to go deeper and deeper, it is that constant sense of purpose which is excellently achieved by SteamWorld Dig’s environment. This is where the game really shines. The story is told to you in a very a straight forward way, by the robot-NPCs on Tumbletown’s surface and the environment itself.
And the journey up and down the mines is not a smooth one either. It involves taking decisions that will affect the way you play your game. Inventory space is limited, so you can carry only a limited number of minerals. Levelling up will unlock upgrades that allow for more inventory space. Your old rusty pickaxe is good only for the first twenty minutes of the game. To dig through harder metal you need a better tool. You eventually unlock a drill, which saves you the trouble of mashing the button repeatedly to swing your axe. A drill runs on water though, and water is scarce.
Light is a requirement too, obviously the mines don’t house fitted bulbs, your lamp is your friend here. And your lamp requires oil to function. Once your oil runs out, the only visible thing on the screen is you, and that makes going down or coming up even more challenging. SteamWorld Dig succeeds in creating the illusion that you’re always under pressure due to its looping mechanics.
To make matters worse, the mine is populated with enemies in the form of worms, maybe a human or two, electric lines, TNT crates and puddles of acid. The enemies are pretty much redundant during the start of the game, but in the later stages even a single enemy can drain out the majority of your health bar. Killing enemies can be a challenge, and dead enemies drop items in the form of health, water or light, so sometimes you’re in a fix that whether you should attempt to kill an enemy for a chance to get water for your dried out drill, but you also have low health so could die.
All these varieties of threats, coupled with the constant need of refuelling your lamp and drill, rejuvenating your health, merge together to create a surprisingly ‘urgency’ kind of an experience. To recover completely, you’ll obviously have to backtrack upwards to the closest teleportation hub or pipeline to get back to the town. And backtracking, to say the least, is as fun as digging down. You discover new paths and pick up minerals you left behind because of lack of inventory space. In the later stages of the game, backtracking gets trickier due to respawning metal slabs, so digging down becomes tricky as you have to make paths through slabs that don’t respawn.
I know for a fact (through other reviews) that the Nintendo 3DS and Steam versions of the game look and work great. On the PlayStation Vita, the controls are as responsive and slick as you could expect, and the game looks gorgeous. Particle and lighting effects look precise.
In the midst of the challenges SteamWorld Dig presents to you, the ultimate purpose of the game is not lost. You are constantly reminded that your uncle was lost somewhere deep down, so the subtle plot delivery system works great.
SteamWorld Dig takes some time to reach the full potential it eventually evolves to, but this is a game that truly stands out. It is not original, it takes its influences from Terraria, Metroid and Dig Dug, but what it brings together is something that is to be cherished. This might just be the game I enjoyed the most in 2014, who knows. There is great potential for replay value too, as no two run-downs can ever be the same. My only issue with the game is that a single playthrough of the campaign is rather short, it ended too fast. Or maybe I was just too immersed to have a logical sense of time.
